Art Anderson

Tom Carter of Spotlight Hobbies has posted on their message board that the '65 Comet Cyclone kits have reached the US West Coast--it won't be long now folks@ Art

I've never seen one in model kit or diecast, in any scale.

First Ford pickup promo was the 1960 F-100 from AMT (which the AMT 3in1 Customizing Kit was based on. Art

Bernard, the short answer is, "Yes, you can airbrush indoors without any venting to the outdoors." However, you will have the odor of paint, and you WILL have overspray because that is inevitable, unavoidable when spraying paint, no matter if it's a spray can or an airbrush. Airbrush overspray is much finer than the heavier droplets of paint that come out of the nozzle of a rattle-can, and in my experience, far less of it as well--given the much smaller quantities of paint used in airbrushing. BUT, it will travel in the air in your home, and certainly a lot of it will land on horizontal surfaces in the room or area you build models in. Art

My Heller Ferguson tractor kit arrived this afternoon!

Got my Ferguson Tractor kit in the mail today, from Megahobby--whoa Nellie--it looks fantastic! Art

From Spotlight Hobbies board: Tom Carter posted that the Comet kits are due on the US West Coast in about 2 weeks--it won't be long after that and they'll be hitting the stores. Art

Bill, it might seem odd, but most of the pics I see of 1941-'42 Ford pickups show the 4cyl version--no V8 badging on the front of the hood, at the bottom of the chrome hood spear where that meets the strips of chrome along the bottom edge of the front. Art

If it will help, the kit you are talking about was first tooled and released by Hubley here in the US, WAY back about 1958-59. Art

To understand what all lacquers basically are (and to simplify this and further discussions), may I present this Wikipedia article? It should greatly help further discussions, without a whole lot of technical descriptions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacquer Art

That grille mesh, from the factory when new, was flat black. Art

Start with a basic premise here: Lacquers, by the very nature of their solvents, WILL penetrate (somewhat dissolve) the surface of lacquer previously laid down. That said, unless you get really crazy laying on a further coat of lacquer, that penetration/dissolving isn't at all a bad thing--it ensures the perfect bonding of succeeding coats of lacquer to those previously sprayed on. Art

Never heard of it being "too dry" to paint. Art

That's been gone a LONG time--it went away with the bankruptcy of Lesney, who owned AMT at the time (1981). I did the box art model you see in the artwork you posted, along with a "custom version" in red & black, in early 1980. Art Anderson

Well, not completely, as I only needed to do a new front crossmember. As I mentioned earlier, Willys-Overland was the primary contractor for the Jeep in WW-II, but they were way too small to produce more than a portion of the some 670,000 Jeeps built 1941-45, so Ford got a contract as well. Both Willys and Ford used the same body supploer, American Central Mfg of Connersville IN, who had been the stamping division of the Cord Corporation. for Jeep bodies. Willys supplied Ford with a thousand or so Jeep chassis to get started, and then Ford took off on their own. Willys used a tubular front crossmember on their MB Jeep all the way along, but Ford soon came up with a channel steel front crossmember, which is a very visible difference (you can see it right through the grille!). So I decided to do my Haseagawa WW-II Jeep as the Ford GPW. Here it is, with the correct front crossmember scratchbuilt and installd (much more correct than what I shared here a few weeks back!) Art

One thing for certain--it sure is UGLY!

That's because Rub N Buff is a wax, with very fine metal powder mixed in with . As for dirt etc. in your airbrush--disassembly and THOROUGH cleaning takes care of that. It is quite possible to get bits of solidified enamel from an older bottle of Testors enamel, given that paint's characteristics. However, with lacquers--remember that virtually every lacquer out there can be re-liquified quickly with fresh lacquer thinner. Art

I find this interesting, as in all my years of thinning paints and airbrushing, I've almost never had a problem with "contaminates" in the paint itself, and that includes both rattle can paint decanted into my airbrush jar, as well as bottled paints poured into my color jar and then thinned for airbrushing. As such, I have NEVER felt any need to "strain" any paint I have ever used. What paint finish contamination I've seen over more than 50 yrs of airbrushing models has been airborne, in the ambient, surrounding air, and I suspect that is what you may well be experiencing. Art

My '70 Cuda in Rallye Red had red oxide primer underneath the red color. As for overspray on the bottoms of the rocker panels, that did go perhaps 3" inward toward the center of the unibody floor pan--I saw my car before it was undercoated at the dealership, up on a lift. Challengers and Barracuda's came off the same assemblyline. Art

I see my first '66 Suburban becoming a panel delivery!

AMT's 1953 Studebaker Starliner hardtop kit is one of the most plentiful of the AMT Trophy Series kits--it's been reissued at least half a dozen times since it first hit the shelves in 1964--the latest release was just a couple of years ago, from Round2--should not be at all hard to find, eBay, or model car swap meets. Art

Who makes this engine in 1/25 scale resin? Art

That's not been my experience, Peter. I did some clear "lenses" over molded-in-place chrome headlights on a couple of grilles about 9 months ago, they are still water-clear. Art

In my 50+ years of using an airbrush to paint models, I have never found any paint, lacquer or enamel to be exactly the same consistency right out of the bottle, so I use a very simply "formula" (if you can call it that!). I use lacquer thinner exclusively, as enamel paint doesn't seem to care a whit if I thin it with lacquer thinner: I thin it to the viscosity of 2% millk, which when done right, "sheets" down the side of my airbrush jar just like 2% milk does down the side of the glass it's poured into. This has worked perfectly for me for years. Simply put, there really cannot be, IMHO, one set formula. And, my paint jobs bear that out. Art